


The Padding of Little Paws

by MaverickWerewolf



Category: Original Work, Wulfgard
Genre: Comedy, F/M, They get turned into cats, but they are very cute cats, that's the entire joke, they are cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21797077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickWerewolf/pseuds/MaverickWerewolf
Summary: What would you do if, one day, you woke up and you were... a cat?
Relationships: Caiden/Sadja
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	The Padding of Little Paws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ajestice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajestice/gifts).



> A Christmas present for the very special and wonderful aj, who is one of the single loveliest people I know. ❤️

Aw man, he ached. From his feet to the tips of his ears to his front paws to— wait. Paws?

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Tom blinked his eyes open and stretched himself out all long, and only then did he actually realize he was absolutely not anything he was supposed to be. Nope, not at all. And he’d been quite a few things, thank you very much. But when he got furry, that tended to come with a whole heaping lot of pain and trauma and also lots of getting much, much, _much_ _… bigger._

Huge.

And now he was small. Relatively small. He was definitely still big, at least by… you know.

Cat standards. Because, yes. He was a cat. Why was he a cat? Hell if he knew. First, he wanted to scream, and since Tom was never one to curb any – well, not many – sudden and primal desires, he opened his silly cat mouth all wide and screamed as loud as he could.

It actually came out as a scream. Oh. Whoops. He still had his voice, apparently. And now he’d gone and screamed and woken up everyone else in the camp. Except then he realized that no one else was _in_ the camp.

Tom sat up on his haunches and looked around. Everyone was gone, but the fire was still slowly smoldering, with a not-totally-eaten big chunk of meat hanging over it on a spit. So where was Caiden?

He sat back and looked down at his red-orange striped paws briefly, flexing his claws in and out – wow, doing that was kind of reflexive, weird – and deciding that he surely must’ve been the single sexiest _tom_ cat, heheh, that’d ever existed. Because you couldn’t really get rid of handsome when it came to him.

As if that mattered right now.

“Guuuys,” Tom called as he padded out into the clearing. “Guys! Guys, I’m a freaking cat, can we fix this? Can we, uh, get me pets and then fix this? Because I _really_ want some pets, lemme tell you—”

_Thud_ , thunk, crash. Tom started back a few feet from where something fell out of a tree and collapsed down into the dead leaves and shit all over the forest floor. When Tom ran over, he found _another_ cat: a black one, with marbled violet purple stripes and, yeah, horns and demon wings and violet eyes, too.

“Hi, Kye,” Tom said immediately, putting on a big stupid cattish grin that probably looked totally ridiculous.

Kye yelped and jumped three feet straight in the air out of the leaves – Tom wasn’t even sure how he did it – and turned into a ball of fluffed up— fluff, his tail getting three times as big. He leapt right up and back and somehow defied all laws of sense and managed to end up with his claws latched into the trunk of a tree.

“ _Tom!?_ _”_ he almost shrieked. “Is – isthatyou!?”

Tom just sat down on his haunches again and watched him, tail flicking everywhere. Which he couldn’t seem to stop. It just kind of kept happening. It reminded him of… You know what, nevermind. No, wait. Not _that_. Don’t go there. It reminded him of his tail when he was a werewolf, okay?

“’Course it is,” Tom said, cocking his head. “Who else has a voice this awesome?”

“Uh— uh – _uh_ – _Tom why are we cats_ ,” Kye blurted, still clinging, ears flat against his head and eyes trying to pop out of their sockets.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I got no idea. You’re super cute, though.”

Kye stared at him like he had no idea what real life was.

“What? Just _saying_. So if we’re both cats, that must mean—”

A loud – _very_ loud – string of guttural curses from a distinctly smoke-charred voice suddenly came from near the campfire, and Tom immediately turned and darted over to see. Because he knew that voice, and if Fintan had been turned into a cat, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Even if, you know, it meant other people seeing him as a cat.

And right there next to the fire stood two more cats: a tall, sleek, and lovely one wearing a coat of silver, spotted fur and a pair of bright green eyes, who looked like she was walking on stilts, and one that was the exact opposite. Short, stumpy, with legs less than a fourth as long as Tom’s and a face that looked like somebody’d smashed it in with a hammer.

“I ain’t a damn _cat_ ,” Fintan declared, shaking himself off violently in a flurry of thick, curly, snowy white fur and long whiskers. “Somebody get this shit elf magic off me! I know it was a elf! _SURANDIIIL!_ _”_

Tom winced. And marched on over to that silver cat, which he guessed was…

“Tom,” Magnhild said, wearing a little cat smile and hardly even seeming bothered. She tilted her head far, and Tom matched the motion, tail swinging around everywhere behind him. “You don’t seem too bothered.”

Tom grinned. “Neither do you.”

“Oh, I’m sure this’s all just _too_ funny,” Fintan said, awkwardly flop-waddle-padding over beside the fire and starting to paw around a bit of jerky. “Tease the dwarf ‘cause he’s still all—”

“Dwarfy?” Tom offered innocently.

“Go to hell, Drake.”

Tom just proceeded to make little paw biscuits on the ground under him, while he twisted one ear back without meaning to as Kye padded into the clearing, too. More motion erupted somewhere on the edge of the clearing, but Tom was distracted. Because there was a tree branch with some laundry hanging on it, and Tom went right over, climbed up the tree, perched on the branch, and… pushed off somebody’s shirt. It was a _big_ shirt, so maybe it’d been Caiden’s.

It fell with a loud flop right in a semi-moist heap on the ground. Tom grinned and flicked his long tail back and forth.

“Tom,” Magnhild said, padding over and sniffing the shirt like a reflex before looking up at him. “What’re you doing?”

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Tom said as he tiptoed in a way only a cat could over to the next article of drying clothing and started pawing that one off, too.

Magnhild’s ears twitched at him briefly before she finally decided aloud, “That’s an answer only you could give.”

“Hey, I got an excuse now. I just can’t help myself, y’know?”

“Caaat-ooos,” a voice called. As if Tom had to wonder whose voice that was, but it got his attention.

Looking up, a little scrappy-looking cat with long ears and mottled fur like a tortoiseshell that couldn’t decide if it was silver, black, brown, or even white had appeared from absolutely nowhere and was running around calling for Caiden.

Tom jumped down – landed perfectly on his feet, of course – and headed over just in time to see a very big, _very, very fluffy_ giant huge mega cat made of mane and muscle and did he mention _fluff_ and a coat of black turning silver here and there.

Oh, and one blue eye. Because the other was missing. Because it was Caiden. As a big. Fluffy. Cat. Of _fluff_. Nope, no more short-cropped messy hair spiking and sticking this way and that. Just fluff.

Tom laughed. He couldn’t help it. Caiden threw him such a glare Tom thought he might die right on the spot, but he didn’t, so that was good.

“There he iiiiss,” Sadja – because that calico was Sadja, of course – cooed and trotted on over, ducking up under Caiden’s very-high-up chin and rubbing herself all up against him in a big circle.

“Sadja—” he started, but his voice went off into a loud, low rumble.

Oh yeah, he started purring. Real loud, like thunder, and Tom grinned while Sadja broke into snickering and rubbed against Caiden so hard she fell over on herself, paws in the air reaching up at his face.

“Stop,” Caiden said, using a great big paw of his own to push one of hers down. She batted at it, so he batted back, and then they were both caught up in this big paw-bat war and it was the most ridiculous thing Tom had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of things, thank you very much.

Oh, and they were both purring like hell.

“I think I like this,” Tom said. “Listen to them,” he said, gesturing with a paw, “they just can’t contain it.”

Caiden huffed loudly at Tom between purring, giant floofy tail waving everywhere.

“How you gonna lick all that fluff, Fluffos?” Sadja said, still laying upside down and mostly on her head. “You’re gonna get your tongue stuck.”

“I’m not planning on it.”

“You’re gonna get hairballs.”

“I’m going to get changed back _long_ before I do that.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. Because I know who did it, and I’ll make him fix it.”

Caiden strode over to the smoldering fire, sat up, and started gnawing on the meat that was still there. Tom made a face. Yeah, okay. So this must’ve happened real suddenly, or else he would’ve finished eating.

Which meant that maybe, just _maybe_ …

“I would like to apologize.”

_Fintan was right,_ Tom finished to himself as he and everyone else turned to regard the last cat to enter the clearing: a regal, sleek cat with long, decidedly midnight blue fur and grey eyes. Surandil. The elf. Wizard. With magic.

No one said a word, though Caiden did grunt pointedly, in a kind of _I told you so_ or _I knew it_ way. They all stared.

Surandil seemed to be getting the picture, because his pupils got all big and he sank very, very low until he was, somehow, like only a cat could do, perfectly and completely flat to the ground.

“I apologize,” he said very quietly. Tom was already getting down low to pounce and wiggling his fuzzy ass back and forth, which he just couldn’t seem to help.

And then everybody moved.

They all took off toward him in a rush of thundering paws and fur and growls and purrs, and Surandil turned with a sharp yowl and ran off into the trees, Tom and everyone else chasing after him.

Sure, maybe a few of them were mad. He knew the little stumpy cat that was Fintan, who lagged behind horribly and tripped over his way-too-short legs, was mad – not that he was any kind of threat, except maybe to Surandil’s shins when they were all back to normal.

But the way Tom saw it, most of them were actually enjoying themselves. Because, hey, what fun was it to be a cat without getting at least one good chase?


End file.
